HOUSTON >> Far too many times for his liking, Matt Shoemaker has stood in front of reporters, explaining the same awkward spot.

Call it a successful failure.

Shoemaker took care of his responsibilities about as well as could be expected, but he still ended up the losing pitcher in the Angels’ 2-1 loss to the Houston Astros, snapping their six-game winning streak.

Shoemaker has a 2.39 ERA in his last 12 games, but he is 3-5 and the Angels are 4-8 in those games, thanks to a pattern of poor run-support.

Shoemaker said his personal turnaround — recall, he was optioned to Triple-A with a 9.15 ERA in April — makes him feel better, but the team performance doesn’t.

“It makes it a little easier to swallow,” he said. “But losing (stinks), no matter how you look at it… It might feel a little better you pitched well, but nobody wants to lose.”

Shoemaker was charged with two runs, but one deserves an asterisk.

In the fifth, he gave up a clean triple to Preston Tucker on a ball that barely eluded Mike Trout’s glove.

“I was kind of in-between diving,” Trout said. “If I had dove, I would have face-planted into that wall.”

Tucker then scored on a Jason Castro single.

The run in the seventh was more frustrating for Shoemaker. Carlos Gomez reached on a one-out bunt single against the Angels shift. He stole second and took third on a grounder. Shoemaker then walked Castro, the No. 9 hitter. It was just his 10th walk in the last dozen games.

Scioscia said Shoemaker looked fatigued, and he pulled him after 101 pitches. Joe Smith then gave-up a first-pitch single to George Springer, making it 2-0.

That deficit proved more than the Angels could handle. Ironically, the Angels came into the game averaging a major-leading 6.9 runs per game in July.

A frustrated Trout lamented that they had been feeling good, before the off day on Thursday.

Of course, Lance McCullers probably also contributed to the interruption of the scoring binge. Using a knee-buckling curve over and over, McCullers took a shutout into the ninth, striking out 10. He whiffed Trout three times.

McCullers struck out Trout the first time when the Angels had runners at the corners and no outs in the first, an inning in which they wasted their best opportunity against him.

After McCullers walked Kole Calhoun and Trout to lead off the ninth, the Angels had a shot to tie the game. All-Star reliever Will Harris got Albert Pujols on a flyout, and then Daniel Nava’s bouncer up the middle hit the mound and then got knocked down by diving Carlos Correa, who got an out at second.

Andrelton Simmons drove in a run with a single before Ji-Man Choi struck out to end it.

Jeff Fletcher has covered the Angels since 2013. Before that, he spent 11 years covering the Giants and A's and working as a national baseball writer. Jeff is a Hall of Fame voter. In 2015, he was elected chairman of the Los Angeles chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America.